Kathomi Gatwiri
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 107919 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Kathomi Gatwiri |
| PRENOMES | Kathomi |
| SOBRENOME | Gatwiri |
| ASSINATURA | GATWIRI K |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Southern Cross University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7794-6481 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 52 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 119 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 52 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2015 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Inclusion Without Dignity
Multiculturalism in Australia is predominantly framed as a benevolent process of “inclusion and diversification”. It promises equity, participation, and belonging for racialized minorities, as well as a pathway to ‘social cohesion’. Inclusion, as it is widely understood, implies equitable access to systems, spaces, and institutions. These enable social and economic mobility while safeguarding belonging and safety. However, for African Australians…
Christianity as coping mechanisms for migrants with mental health challenges in Australia
Christian religion may be a powerful resource that can serve as a coping mechanism to resolve challenges and provide comfort to African migrants confronted with mental health challenges. We aimed to explore the coping strategies among African migrants in Australia. We undertook semi-structured interviews online with 11 participants with African backgrounds, comprising six mental health clinicians and five migrant service users living in Australia…
Racial fatigue, disembodiment and dignity
In this paper, we propose a metaphor that conceptualises racism as a fog. In so doing, we articulate how the racial fog operates as a meaning-(re)making system that hides, obscures and minimises the violence of racism. We suggest that the fog produces a form of epistemic entrapment , where Bla(c)k people are forced to self betray, idolise and internalise dominant white norms, often at the cost of their own identity and wellbeing. We utilise the f…
Racial Misrecognition and Micro‐Practices That Undermine Dignity
This article theorises experiences of racial indignity among [Black] Africans in Australia by examining how racial misrecognition (disrespect, dismissal, inferiorisation, silencing and erasure) systematically undermines, erodes and compromises their dignity and personhood. Using a dignity‐informed theoretical framework, the study explores how dignity is racialised, constructed, denied and contested within the Australian socio‐political context. I…
Ubuntu philosophy, values, and principles
Rising immigration and increasing cultural diversity globally highlight the need to decolonize social work and challenge the hegemony of Western-centric cultural and epistemological foundations. This article explores how Ubuntu philosophy can serve as a global decolonizing framework in social work education and practice. Using a reflective conceptual analysis process, we explored Ubuntu as an alternative paradigm for social work educators, resear…
What Helps Children and Young People to Disclose their Experience of Sexual Abuse and What Gets in the Way? A Systematic Scoping Review
The Human Rights Challenges Experienced by Queer Youth in Out-of-Home Care
The human rights challenges faced by Queer youth in out-of-home care (OOHC), such as foster and residential care, have largely been overlooked in child protection research, policy, and practice development. This systematic scoping review aims to identify and synthesize the existing international, English-language, empirical research documenting the human rights challenges experienced by Queer youth in OOHC systems. This review followed the Joanna…
How dare people of colour outrank me?’
Efforts to decolonise the Australian university continue to rest on the shoulders of minoritised academics who are working harder for less. Participants in this study highlighted the ongoing gendered and racialised dimensions of academic success, describing their experiences of navigating university institutions as a complex and often precarious negotiation of power, visibility, and belonging. Many reported that despite achieving relative success…
Maintaining Standards or Gatekeeping the Academy? Reflections of Peer Review Experiences by Racially and Culturally Minoritized Scholars in Australia
Despite its widespread use for quality assurance within the academic publishing economy, the peer review process is significantly flawed, and to a large extent, “broken.” Emerging literature from researchers who work from marginalized cultural, theoretical, and political perspectives shows that while peer review processes are useful in upholding academic ethics and rigor, they can also be biased and exclusionary. This has led to vexing questions …
Reversing the Gaze
In this paper, we engage with rescue and saviour narratives surrounding transracial–transnational adoption (also known as intercountry adoption) as a provocation and as manufactured myths. These myths have erased the nuances and complexities of transracial–transnational adoption by commodifying adoptees as pitiful orphans in need of rescue, first families as incapable or unworthy, and adoptive parents, countries and organizations as benevolent sa…
Racial dignity framework
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter recognizes that all human beings have ‘inherent dignity’; they are ‘born free and have equal and inalienable rights’ (Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter, 1948). This article explores an important contradiction: the idea that all people possess equal, inherent dignity versus the reality that race, a social construct, creates categories that assign unequal worth to those who are raci…
Embedding Cultural Knowledge in Social Work Education
Social work students (SWS) are increasingly demanding diverse curriculums and training in skills that will help them decentre whiteness as their default position of professional practice. This article reports on findings from a qualitative study exploring how Masters of SWS at a regional Australian university engaged with content delivered in a core unit with a strong focus on anti-racist, anti-oppressive practices. The unit’s structure and deliv…
Exploring the barriers to mental health help-seeking among African Migrants in Australia
Background: The health of African migrants in Australia is a largely under-researched topic despite the steadily increasing size of the population and its uniqueness. In particular, few studies have explored the mental health of African migrants in Australia or their utilization of mental health services. Aims: This study explored the barriers to mental health help-seeking among first-generation African migrants in Australia. Methods: In this qua…
Australian Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Grandparents have a long history of assuming caregiving responsibilities, particularly in Indigenous communities, where the concepts of “kin” and “care” are expansive. In Australia, there has been a rise in grandparents becoming custodial carers for their grandchildren who cannot live with their parents, biological or otherwise. Placement with relatives or family friends is known as kinship care, with most of these families headed by grandparents…
How Children and Young People Disclose That They Have Been Sexually Abused
Child sexual abuse is a pervasive social and public health concern with high social and economic costs. Children and young people who experience this form of abuse are in danger of serious, ongoing impacts on their development, functioning and overall life trajectory as a result of the lasting influence of complex trauma. The recent research, drawing from young adult self‐reports, has found that more than one in three girls and almost one in five…
Young people’s lived experience of relational practices in therapeutic residential care in Australia
Complex Encounters of 'Homecoming
This paper explores homecoming journeys from an adopted Korean perspective through the use of autoethnography. Adopted Koreans have been returning to South Korea in search of answers, and instead encounter the global apparatus that is the ‘transnational adoption industrial complex’ – the global for-profit economy that manufactures ‘orphans’ by removing children from single Korean mothers to send to the West in order to satisfy the needs of (prima…
Reflections of 'Doing' Research that Involves Trauma
This paper examines the experiences of four researchers engaged in a study with young people residing in therapeutic residential care facilities in an Australian state. These young people, often under 18 years of age, have complex needs stemming from experiences of abuse, neglect, or family breakdown. We explore the challenges, ethical considerations, and personal impact of conducting this trauma-intensive research through a collaborative and ref…
Approaches to Assessment and Intervention With Children and Young People Who Engage in Harmful Sexual Behavior
This paper reports the findings of a project that conducted a rapid review of evidence regarding assessment and intervention approaches responding to children and young people who engage in harmful sexual behaviors. A literature review was conducted using a systematic search of academic databases and consultation with subject matter experts. The process resulted in 27 scholarly publications being included and analyzed to explore what was known ab…
Experiences of Children and Young People with a Disability in Out‐of‐Home Care in Australia
Children with disabilities in out‐of‐home care (OOHC) are an overrepresented group in Australia, yet little is known about their circumstances, needs, and experiences within OOHC. Utilising a systematic scoping review methodology, we explored the state of knowledge about the experiences of children and young people with a disability in out‐of‐home care in Australia. Findings in this review speak to the unmet needs and challanges that children wit…
Becoming both
Purpose This paper aims to highlight how Black African academics who live and work under coloniality are systematically seen as “out of place” and how this positioning compounds their experiences of interpersonal and systemic marginalisation within predominantly white universities. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper that theorises the experiences of two Black African academics in Australian higher education. It takes a form of…
What do we know about the experiences of belonging for [Black] Africans in Australia? A systematic scoping review
Belonging is political. While it is a felt‐and‐embodied experience, it is also heavily mediated by power. For racially and culturally minoritised people, belonging is expressed in hidden, often racialised codes articulated through an “us and them” framework. Within this systematic scoping review, critical issues of belonging are made visible, indicating that belonging for Black Africans in Australia is a highly racialised and complex cultural exp…
Mentors and sponsors
Mentorship and sponsorships play a significant role in faculty experiences, career trajectories, well‐being and academic success in higher education. In this study, 23 racially and culturally minoritised (RACM) academics were interviewed about their experiences working in Australian universities, and all spoke about the key importance of their mentoring experiences. Mentorship was understood as both enabling and constricting, with unspoken rules …
A love letter to Black people or anti‐white propaganda? ‘Black (non‐Indigenous) people's reflections’ on the role of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Australia
BlackLivesMatter activism is a contemporaneous manifestation of a centuries‐old resistance against anti‐Black racism. This paper analyses diverse perceptions about the #BlackLivesMatter movement's purpose, significance and potential utility in the Australian context. Our analysis of the #BlackLivesMatter highlights how the movement harnessed the power of social media to deploy counternarratives to white supremacy on a global scale through sharing…
How is therapeutic residential care constructed within key policy documents
Therapeutic residential care (TRC) is a mode of delivering out‐of‐home care (OOHC) that can help meet the needs of some of Australia's most vulnerable young people and their families. TRC programmes aim to support young people to develop positive relationship experiences in a safe and stable environment. Given that TRC is a relatively new model of intervention, to date, the alignment between its aspirational aims and the existing and evolving pol…
Battling the “headwinds”
Academics who identify or are identified with minoritised groups in society and teach marginalised subjects are particularly prone to experiencing individual and systemic bias and discrimination which harm their wellbeing and restrict their career advancement. These challenges can be likened to “headwinds” that they must constantly battle against, whilst those belonging to dominant social groups benefit from “tailwind” effects. We critique the fr…
What does research tell us about young people’s participation in decision making in residential care? A systematic scoping review
Racial Microaggressions at Work
Theorising how race and Africanness intersect in the professional lives of African immigrants can provide a nuanced understanding of how racial identities shape the professional identities of Black Africans in Australia. This article is contextualised within a larger study that sought to explore the Afro-diasporic experiences of highly skilled Black African immigrants in South Australia. Particularly, it examines how Black African professionals e…
Reclaiming racial dignity
The #BlackLivesMatter Movement has amplified the role of social media in visibilising anti‐Black violence. Drawing on the narratives and expertise of those who have experienced anti‐Black racism, this paper employs the theoretical concept of racial dignity to highlight how young African Australians participate in racial discourse on social media. The findings of this paper demonstrate that social media is a significant site where Black African yo…
Afro-diasporic Experiences of Highly Skilled Black African Immigrants in Australia
This study explored the experiences of skilled African immigrants in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 individuals from different sub-Saharan African countries currently residing in South Australia. The findings report on the experiences of change, cultural identity, diasporic identities, employment, negotiating family dynamics, and the experiences of racial discrimination in Australia. These findings call for considera…
BlackLivesMatter
African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the anti-Black racism Black African young people endure in everyday Australia. By drawing on a multi-method approach consisting of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, this paper explores the use of social media by Black African young people (n=15) to visibilise their experiences of racism. We situate the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, as a significan…
Block, Unfollow, Delete’
Interracial relationships are situated historically within a complex racial discourse. At the height of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020, interracial relationships were tested, broken and repaired, whilst others were unable to withstand the racial destabilisation summoned by the Movement. In this article, we theorise how Blac/k bodies are organised and structured within systems of racial hierachialisation and the impact of this within relat…
A Roar of Rage", "Toddlers with Guns" and "Eternal Bloody Protest
This article explores the experiences of First Nations participants as the #BlackLivesMatter protests burst onto Australian mainstream and social media platforms and onto Australian streets in 2020. We explore First Nations participants' perceptions about the significance and relevance of #BlackLivesMatter in Australia to support First Nations existing political campaigns to address structural racism and settler colonialism in the Australian cont…
Parenting Black children in White spaces
This paper employs a critical race theory (CRT) perspective to probe the experiences of skilled African migrants parenting Black children in Australia, a predominantly White country. Two key themes emerged from this study: (1) the need to explicitly teach children about race and racism and to foster positive racial identities and (2) the complexities of navigating tensions between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ cultural values. Participants demonstrated…
The implications of Neoliberalism on African economies, health outcomes and wellbeing
What do we know about the experiences of belonging for [Black] Africans in Australia? A systematic scoping review
Belonging is political. While it is a felt‐and‐embodied experience, it is also heavily mediated by power. For racially and culturally minoritised people, belonging is expressed in hidden, often racialised codes articulated through an “us and them” framework. Within this systematic scoping review, critical issues of belonging are made visible, indicating that belonging for Black Africans in Australia is a highly racialised and complex cultural exp…
Impacts of Covid-19 on African Migrants' Wellbeing, and Their Coping Strategies in Urban and Regional New South Wales, Australia
Aim As the COVID-19 pandemic response continues to evolve, the need to protect more vulnerable populations in society becomes more apparent. Studies are still emerging on how different population groups have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study explored the impact of COVID-19 for African migrants in New South Wales, Australia, and their coping strategies. Methods We employed inductive, exploratory qualitative interpretive research de…
Pedagogy or “trauma porn”? Racial literacy as a prerequisite for teaching racially dignifying content in the Australian social work context
Purpose On June 21, 2021, a motion was introduced to the Australian Senate calling on the federal government to reject critical race theory (CRT) from the national curriculum, claiming that CRT is divisive and racist. This was allegedly sparked by revisions to the national school curriculum, which included a more accurate reflection of the historical record of First Nations peoples’ experiences of colonisation and the framing of British arrival o…
Teaching shouldn’t feel like a combat sport’
In the Australian Higher Education sector, the gendered, racialised, and heteronormative culture of neoliberalism means that for minoritised teachers the university classroom is always a contested, and often hostile, space. Our gendered and racialised bodies become objects under the gaze of our students and the deafening headwinds of post-truth anti-intellectualism render our stories difficult for our students to hear. This paper probes our exper…
What is known about child sexual exploitation in residential care in Australia? A systematic scoping review
Young people’s lived experience of relational practices in therapeutic residential care in Australia
Becoming both
Purpose This paper aims to highlight how Black African academics who live and work under coloniality are systematically seen as “out of place” and how this positioning compounds their experiences of interpersonal and systemic marginalisation within predominantly white universities. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper that theorises the experiences of two Black African academics in Australian higher education. It takes a form of…
How is therapeutic residential care constructed within key policy documents
Therapeutic residential care (TRC) is a mode of delivering out‐of‐home care (OOHC) that can help meet the needs of some of Australia's most vulnerable young people and their families. TRC programmes aim to support young people to develop positive relationship experiences in a safe and stable environment. Given that TRC is a relatively new model of intervention, to date, the alignment between its aspirational aims and the existing and evolving pol…
I’m a Local
This article discusses the impact and implications of ‘I’m a Local...’, an initiative developed in partnership between a regional university, a refugee resettlement community organisation and former refugees from African nations in a regional Australian community. The initiative sought to improve understandings about refugees, acknowledge their contributions to Australian society and support local, inclusive cultures. It included the development …
A paradigm shift in responding to children who have experienced trauma
Racial fatigue, disembodiment and dignity
In this paper, we propose a metaphor that conceptualises racism as a fog. In so doing, we articulate how the racial fog operates as a meaning-(re)making system that hides, obscures and minimises the violence of racism. We suggest that the fog produces a form of epistemic entrapment , where Bla(c)k people are forced to self betray, idolise and internalise dominant white norms, often at the cost of their own identity and wellbeing. We utilise the f…
Reversing the Gaze
In this paper, we engage with rescue and saviour narratives surrounding transracial–transnational adoption (also known as intercountry adoption) as a provocation and as manufactured myths. These myths have erased the nuances and complexities of transracial–transnational adoption by commodifying adoptees as pitiful orphans in need of rescue, first families as incapable or unworthy, and adoptive parents, countries and organizations as benevolent sa…
Racial dignity framework
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter recognizes that all human beings have ‘inherent dignity’; they are ‘born free and have equal and inalienable rights’ (Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter, 1948). This article explores an important contradiction: the idea that all people possess equal, inherent dignity versus the reality that race, a social construct, creates categories that assign unequal worth to those who are raci…
Australian Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Grandparents have a long history of assuming caregiving responsibilities, particularly in Indigenous communities, where the concepts of “kin” and “care” are expansive. In Australia, there has been a rise in grandparents becoming custodial carers for their grandchildren who cannot live with their parents, biological or otherwise. Placement with relatives or family friends is known as kinship care, with most of these families headed by grandparents…
How Children and Young People Disclose That They Have Been Sexually Abused
Child sexual abuse is a pervasive social and public health concern with high social and economic costs. Children and young people who experience this form of abuse are in danger of serious, ongoing impacts on their development, functioning and overall life trajectory as a result of the lasting influence of complex trauma. The recent research, drawing from young adult self‐reports, has found that more than one in three girls and almost one in five…
Putting vaginal fistulas on the international social work map
Why should social workers care about vaginal fistulas? Why should we turn our attention to a health problem mostly experienced by materially impoverished young Black women, especially those in Africa? Using a critical perspective, which we define, we argue that vaginal fistulas are much more than a gynaecological health issue but symptomatic of the gender-, race-, class- and age-based oppressions many young Black women in the ‘Third World’ suffer…
From Adversity to Stability to Integration
A paradigm shift in responding to children who have experienced trauma
African Womanhood and Incontinent Bodies
The implications of Neoliberalism on African economies, health outcomes and wellbeing
Battling the “headwinds”
Academics who identify or are identified with minoritised groups in society and teach marginalised subjects are particularly prone to experiencing individual and systemic bias and discrimination which harm their wellbeing and restrict their career advancement. These challenges can be likened to “headwinds” that they must constantly battle against, whilst those belonging to dominant social groups benefit from “tailwind” effects. We critique the fr…
I’m a Local
This article discusses the impact and implications of ‘I’m a Local...’, an initiative developed in partnership between a regional university, a refugee resettlement community organisation and former refugees from African nations in a regional Australian community. The initiative sought to improve understandings about refugees, acknowledge their contributions to Australian society and support local, inclusive cultures. It included the development …
Parenting Black children in White spaces
This paper employs a critical race theory (CRT) perspective to probe the experiences of skilled African migrants parenting Black children in Australia, a predominantly White country. Two key themes emerged from this study: (1) the need to explicitly teach children about race and racism and to foster positive racial identities and (2) the complexities of navigating tensions between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ cultural values. Participants demonstrated…
What is known about child sexual exploitation in residential care in Australia? A systematic scoping review
What does research tell us about young people’s participation in decision making in residential care? A systematic scoping review
Indigenous Children and Young People in Residential Care
In Australia and internationally, Indigenous children are seriously overrepresented in the child welfare system. This article provides an overview of literature investigating the needs of Indigenous children in residential care facilities. The provision of culturally safe and trauma-informed therapeutic care to Indigenous children and young people in residential care recognizes that the trauma and violence that they have experienced is exacerbate…
Minority Stress for Care Experienced Young Queer People
Telling Our Stories
The findings demonstrate that despite challenges, skilled African migrants' resilience, ambition and determination were significant enablers to a healthy resettlement in Australia, contributing effectively to social, economic and cultural expectations, and subsequently meeting most of their own migration intentions. These findings suggest that resilience factors identified in the study are key elements of integration
Teaching shouldn’t feel like a combat sport’
In the Australian Higher Education sector, the gendered, racialised, and heteronormative culture of neoliberalism means that for minoritised teachers the university classroom is always a contested, and often hostile, space. Our gendered and racialised bodies become objects under the gaze of our students and the deafening headwinds of post-truth anti-intellectualism render our stories difficult for our students to hear. This paper probes our exper…
Afro-diasporic Experiences of Highly Skilled Black African Immigrants in Australia
This study explored the experiences of skilled African immigrants in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 individuals from different sub-Saharan African countries currently residing in South Australia. The findings report on the experiences of change, cultural identity, diasporic identities, employment, negotiating family dynamics, and the experiences of racial discrimination in Australia. These findings call for considera…
Racial Microaggressions at Work
Theorising how race and Africanness intersect in the professional lives of African immigrants can provide a nuanced understanding of how racial identities shape the professional identities of Black Africans in Australia. This article is contextualised within a larger study that sought to explore the Afro-diasporic experiences of highly skilled Black African immigrants in South Australia. Particularly, it examines how Black African professionals e…
Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia
Pedagogy or “trauma porn”? Racial literacy as a prerequisite for teaching racially dignifying content in the Australian social work context
Purpose On June 21, 2021, a motion was introduced to the Australian Senate calling on the federal government to reject critical race theory (CRT) from the national curriculum, claiming that CRT is divisive and racist. This was allegedly sparked by revisions to the national school curriculum, which included a more accurate reflection of the historical record of First Nations peoples’ experiences of colonisation and the framing of British arrival o…
Care experienced LGBTQA + young people in out-of-home care in Australia
The most challenging aspect of this journey has been dealing with child protection”
When children cannot live at home with their parents, a placement with relatives or family friends has become a preferred first option in many Western countries in out-of-home care systems. Whilst practised by Indigenous communities for centuries, this is a relatively new model of out-of-home care in Western child welfare systems. Kinship care has emerged as a form of care that is arguably worth investing in. It offers kin children the opportunit…
BlackLivesMatter
African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the anti-Black racism Black African young people endure in everyday Australia. By drawing on a multi-method approach consisting of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, this paper explores the use of social media by Black African young people (n=15) to visibilise their experiences of racism. We situate the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, as a significan…
Block, Unfollow, Delete’
Interracial relationships are situated historically within a complex racial discourse. At the height of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020, interracial relationships were tested, broken and repaired, whilst others were unable to withstand the racial destabilisation summoned by the Movement. In this article, we theorise how Blac/k bodies are organised and structured within systems of racial hierachialisation and the impact of this within relat…
Lived Experiences of Slovak and Czech Immigrants to Australia
After World War II, an estimated five million people were on the move in Czechoslovakia. Between 1954 and 1970, over 16,000 of them immigrated to Australia. This paper is part of a larger research project that provides an in-depth inquiry of the lived experiences of 18 post-World War II emigrants from Czechoslovakia, who are now Australian citizens. Findings reveal emigrants' significant emotional reflections about their life in Czechoslovakia an…
Teaching about vulnerability and love in social work
Teaching vulnerably, and doing so in a way that ‘talks back’ to the dominant ‘banking model’ and the neoliberal forces that have entered the classroom where everything is evaluated through flawed metrics such as Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs), is to take an enormous personal and professional risk. This paper is written as a critical collaborative autoethnographic reflective dialogue between two social work academics who embody diametrical…
Reclaiming racial dignity
The #BlackLivesMatter Movement has amplified the role of social media in visibilising anti‐Black violence. Drawing on the narratives and expertise of those who have experienced anti‐Black racism, this paper employs the theoretical concept of racial dignity to highlight how young African Australians participate in racial discourse on social media. The findings of this paper demonstrate that social media is a significant site where Black African yo…
Sociology (37 obras) · Political science (34 obras) · Psychology (28 obras) · Gender Studies (25 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Medicine (19 obras) · Gender Studies (16 obras) · Child Welfare and Adoption (14 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Social Psychology (11 obras)